Photo by courtesy of/courtoisie de African Music Week. Vivian Barclay, left/à gauche.

Vivian Barclay receives inaugural African Music Week Trailblazer Award

Story by Howard Druckman | Monday November 1st, 2021

Vivian Barclay, a member of SOCAN’s Board of Directors, was honoured by African Music Week with the organization’s first-ever Trailblazer Award, presented on Oct. 22 during the Queens Summit event, at the Small World Music Centre in downtown Toronto. SOCAN congratulates Vivian on this great achievement!

It’s only the latest accomplishment for Barclay, the General Manager of Warner Chappell Music Canada. A classically trained musician, she’s composed music for television commercials and won awards for her digital audio editing talents. She’s worked as a radio programmer and on-air host, in artist management, publicity/promotion, and as a programmer for conferences/festivals. Barclay sits on the Boards of SOCAN, Music Publishers Canada, the Toronto Music Advisory Committee, the Toronto Council for the National Association of Black Female Executives in Music & Entertainment, as well as Phemphat Entertainment Group – producers of the all-female Honey Jam Showcase, a non-profit organization which provides mentoring opportunities for artists.

The sixth annual African Music Week (AMW) festival took place Oct. 22-23, 2021, continuing its mission to heighten the understanding of Africans and people of African descent through music and culture, with a series of events in Toronto. African musicians and music industry executives from throughout the African Diaspora gather at AMW each year for both the conference and showcase components, to expose artists to resources, networks, and platforms, while providing long-term mentoring to help launch and maintain careers in the global entertainment industry. Participants this year included TÖME, Idahams, Master T, and Dalton Higgins.

SOCAN Foundation’s Charlie Wall-Andrews named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women

Story by Tiana Feng | Monday November 1st, 2021

SOCAN is thrilled that SOCAN Foundation Executive Director Charlie Wall-Andrews has been named to the 2021 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winners list, released by the Women’s Executive Network on October 25th, recognizing 100 outstanding women across Canada who advocate for workforce diversity and inspire tomorrow’s leaders.

“We’re so proud to have Charlie leading the SOCAN Foundation,” said SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown. “Her work for music creators and, of course, her advocacy and education efforts for workforce equity and diversity are exemplary and inspirational to all of us.”

As head of the SOCAN Foundation, Wall-Andrews’ work has helped countless artists turn their passion and talent into sustainable careers. Among her accomplishments are creating programs like the HER Music Award and Equity X Production, which promote more women and gender minorities in music, and partnering with the Indigenous Music Awards to create the Indigenous Songwriter Award and SIRIUS XM to create the Young Canadian Songwriter Award, which gives $5,000 prizes annually to five young emerging songwriters across the country.

Wall-Andrews is a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Ted Rogers School of Management. She specializes in strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and serves on the Board of Directors of WorkInCulture and TELUS Community Investment Board, and she is the inaugural Vice-Chair of Music Canada’s Advisory Council.

“To be celebrated among leaders dedicated to making an impact in their respective communities is empowering,” said Charlie. “The cultural, economic, and social output of the creative industries is important. Nonetheless, while progress has been made to build a more inclusive sector, the creative industries continue to be fuelled with barriers and challenges for women and gender-diverse people, as well as Indigenous, Black, and racialized people, often heightened for people who may have intersecting identities. There is significant work required to challenge the status quo.”

The Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards span the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors, with the winners selected by WXN’s Diversity Council of Canada.

Congratulations to Charlie Wall-Andrews on this great achievement!

 

 

CISAC Global Collections Report shows creators’ royalties down by € 1 billion in 2020

Story by Tiana Feng | Wednesday October 27th, 2021

The International Confederation of Societies of Authors (CISAC) has announced that worldwide royalty collections for creators of music, audiovisual, art, drama and literary works fell by 9.9% in 2020 with losses amounting to more than € 1 billion as a result of the global pandemic.  

 According to the Global Collections Report, total collections fell to €9.32 billion as live and public performance revenue nearly halved across the world. However, the decline was mitigated by a strong rise in digital royalties, reflecting a sharp increase in audio and visual streaming around the world.  

 “When I took on the presidency of CISAC in May 2020, the subjugation of the creator was already a massive issue. Then COVID struck, highlighting two things. First, that streaming is fast heading towards being the most important source of creators’ earnings in the future. And second, that streaming revenues, however fast they grow, are currently simply not providing a fair reward when shared across millions of individual recipients,” said CISAC President Bjorn Ulvaeus. 

 For more highlights from CISAC’s 2021 Global Collections Report (for 2020 data), visit www.CISAC.org.